


Sleep, don't weep

by kellsbells



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Memory Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 19:16:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17731046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellsbells/pseuds/kellsbells
Summary: Her name was Emily Lake. Emily Hannah Lake. Or at least, that’s what they told her.





	Sleep, don't weep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sistersin7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistersin7/gifts).



> Hello all. It's been a hot minute. :) I found this fic in my drafts a few days ago and realised that, though I'd thought it unfinished, it was actually pretty perfect in terms of what I had wanted to write. After a few edits today, I am posting it here. Also, it's a gift to my good friend Sistersin7, for your unwavering support and friendship. It's really nice to post for this fandom again.  
> Happy reading  
> Kellsbells

Her name was Emily Lake. Emily Hannah Lake. Or at least, that’s what they told her. She was a teacher, she loved literature, and she was good at her job. She loved her students. That much felt true. She did love literature, and she cared a lot for the children she was tasked with teaching. She had a way with children, and they respected her; respected the glint of steel that lay underneath the pleasant surface.

 

Something in her was dormant, she knew. Something was alive in her and waiting to be freed. She didn’t know what – her memory was as blank as her internet history – but she knew it was _something_. Mr Kosan, whoever he was, was a smooth and practised liar, but a liar nonetheless. She hadn’t been in an accident. All of her scars were old, apart from the one on her shoulder, and that was clearly a gunshot wound. She’d worked that out almost immediately. Still, without any other information or knowing anything about herself, what could she do? So she played along with the fiction that was her life.

 

It was a fairly boring life, all things considered. She was new to the school, so she didn’t have any friends with whom to go out or do whatever things teachers did. She wasn’t married and she didn’t have a partner. She did have a cat, and while something about that felt wrong, she went along with it, too. She was careful always to show her innocent, happy face to the world, but in private she occasionally brooded. Brooded over the fact that she didn’t have anything to brood _about._ Which was utterly ridiculous, but she felt like her life was too simple, too easy.

 

She had nightmares, nightmares from which she woke up literally dripping with sweat, her vocal cords tight, her throat aching, her eyes streaming. After a week, she bought a noise-activated recording device online using one of the library computers and had it delivered to the school, just in case her mail was being intercepted. She listened back the next morning and found that it had recorded 76 minutes of her screaming. Two names. Christina, and Micah. She didn’t know who either of those people were, and there were no pictures in her brain to accompany the names. She wondered why none of her neighbours complained, and was surprised to find that her apartment had been expertly (and almost invisibly) soundproofed.

 

Her investigations didn’t get her any further. She researched the names – Christina, Micah, and gunshot wound. That was all she had to go on. There were no results that meant anything to her. So she reluctantly gave up. She gave herself permission to live this life that she’d been granted, and she tried, she really did. But no-one could hold her interest; dates, friendships – they bored her. Her hands itched to build or draw or write, perhaps, but she had neither the inspiration nor the knowledge to do any of those things.

 

The day the Secret Service agents showed up, she was genuinely frightened. The gun the man was waving around – she knew what it was. It might look like a ray gun from an old film about a Martian invasion, but she knew.

 

_Tesla…_

 

That was all. But it was something. They made her leave the school, and they took her back to her apartment. The burly one called his female partner Micah. Emily managed to get a look at the woman’s badge, which did appear to be real, so far as she could tell, and corrected herself.

 

_Myka…_

Surely it was no coincidence that the Secret Service agent was called Myka. It might have been spelled differently, but the woman knew Emily. She watched Emily warily, yes, but with a disappointment and pain that spoke to familiarity. She winced when Emily spoke. Emily didn’t blame her for that; she had spent so many hours in front of the classroom wondering why the vowels sounded wrong in her mouth, why the spellings didn’t look right to her on the board. There was something else about this Myka. Emily felt a longing the likes of which she had never felt, as soon as those eyes met hers, as soon as she said “Helena?” in that sad and confused tone. She _wanted_ this woman. Her body, her mind, her soul – they cried out their need for Agent Myka Bering.

 

The agents didn’t explain anything directly to her, but when she managed to get a knife from the kitchen to threaten them, out of sheer desperation – and to see what they would do – the woman told the man – Pete – that if Emily had wanted him dead, he’d be lying in a pool of his own blood. And she kept calling Emily by that other name. HG, or Helena. That felt right. Helena. She breathed it to herself when they weren’t paying attention, under the pretext of talking to her feline companion. _Helena_.

 

What Myka had said – about the man lying in a pool of his own blood – that too, felt true. She should have been able to shake him off, to break his grip and then his jaw, his cheekbone – all with a few quick and precise movements. But that part of her was still asleep, or perhaps absent – she wasn’t sure, exactly.

 

The man who attacked them was terrifying. He was a beast on a leash, and he had somehow survived a terrible fall unscathed. He took her away, him and the young man who Myka and Pete knew. They took her away, and they questioned her over and over, and it wasn’t much of a stretch to pretend to be terrified. She wasn’t far from it. But when she saw the coin, she felt true terror. Because she knew, somewhere deep within her, that the coin was her death, even before the man in the wheelchair said a word.

 

It was a shock, then, to awaken in a bed, well and whole. She looked around her in the darkness and found herself in a small room. Her hands found a lamp, and when she looked at the room in the light, she remembered.

 

She was HG Wells. Charles was her brother, the public face of their little team, but she was the one with the ideas. He did some (but not all) of the writing, and she sat back and allowed him to do so for the sake of seeing her ideas in print. Then she got pregnant, and her life changed. She remembered holding Christina in her arms when she was born, and she remembered holding Christina with someone else’s arms after she died.

 

The Bronze sector, the Trident – her betrayal – they were all vague memories, now. Whomever she had been, that HG Wells – she was gone, just as surely as Christina herself was. She didn’t know who she was going to be now.

 

A quiet knock at her door brought her out of her reverie.

 

“Come in,” she said, relieved beyond measure to hear her rich, smooth English accent reassert itself.

 

“Hey, Helena,” Myka said hesitantly. She stepped into the room quietly, her long legs clothed in what looked to be some sort of yoga pants. “I saw your light on, and I wanted to check you were okay, after everything today.” She looked anxious, and was searching Emily’s – no, Helena’s – eyes for something.

 

“I’m… I’m okay, Myka,” she said, not sure what else to say. “I just couldn’t sleep,” she added. Myka nodded in understanding.

 

“Me either. Today was… intense,” she said, still looking at Emily intently.

 

The truth was, Emily was a little hazy on the details of the day. She mostly knew what Helena knew; but they weren’t quite one, yet, and she suspected that most of Helena was asleep right then. She remembered small details from that day - a flash of light, burning her to nothing. She remembered being tied up with Myka. Small impressions, impressions that were little use by themselves.

 

“Yes,” she said, smiling gently. “And are you…okay, I mean?”

 

“Sure,” Myka said, but she didn’t look okay. Emily might not know everything, but she’d seen enough of her students loitering in the doorway of her classroom with that look on her face to recognise when someone needed to talk.

 

“Do you want to sit, darling?” she asked, the endearment slipping out of its own accord. Myka blushed a little, and sat next to Helena. She was twisting her hands together, staring at them intently. Emily put a hand on top of them, stroking Myka’s knuckles gently. The contact made them both gasp quietly.

 

“What is it, Myka?” she asked quietly. Myka examined their joined hands for a moment before turning to her.

 

“Do you ever feel like you have a chance to have something that you always wanted, if you just had the courage to reach out and take it?” Myka asked, looking intently at her in a way that made Emily’s stomach flip over. She might not have experienced this before, not in her own year of life at least, but this body had. Helena had. She had experienced far too much of it, in Emily’s opinion, but that was neither here nor there. Myka was looking at her with desire. For the life of her, Emily couldn’t work out why. Helena Wells had fooled her, had betrayed her, had driven her away from this place, her home, and she _still_ wanted her?

 

“The thing is, Helena… I think I’ve loved you since before Egypt, and I feel like maybe there’s something here, between us, and I don’t know what you’re doing tomorrow or the day after, but I know that I can’t let you go without even trying, you know?” Myka blurted, her hand coming up to push Emily’s hair away from her face gently. The edge of her finger grazed Emily’s cheekbone and she caught her breath sharply.

 

“I… I don’t know what to say, Myka,” she began, but Myka just smiled at her.

 

“Then don’t say anything,” she suggested, and she leaned forward and touched her lips to Emily’s gently. Emily decided that between Myka’s soft lips and her own pounding heart, discretion was the better part of valour. She kissed Myka as she had wanted to from the moment they met. She let her hands roam into Myka’s hair first, those wild curls tamed somehow into straight, dark silky locks like her own. Some sort of psychological response to her disappearance, her betrayal, she supposed. But she didn’t think much more that night; she did what she so desperately wanted to do and she made love to Myka, allowed Myka to make love to her, and they were still doing exactly that when dawn came.

 

“I… I know Artie is on your side now, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be in here when he gets up. And I don’t want to rub Claudia’s face in this… in you being here, alive, when Steve is gone. So I should go, I think,” Myka babbled, and Emily was hopelessly charmed by her stuttering after she had so confidently taken Emily to heights of pleasure and what felt like love.

 

“Whatever you think, darling,” Emily said, her fingers tracing Myka’s lips gently. Myka didn’t leave for another hour.

 

Emily fell asleep, despite trying to hold on to consciousness for as long as she could. She didn’t want to forget this; not a second of it. But exhaustion overtook her and she slept without dreams for many days.

 

The next time she awoke she was in an empty apartment. She didn’t know where she was. There was a pile of handwritten notes on the kitchen table, and there were words and phrases written in different places - “astrolabe,” and “time travel” and “the bomb – Artie knew,” was underlined four times.

 

Her memory was still patchy. She could remember the bomb, a piece of concrete or stone in a plastic case. She remembered the big lug – Pete – trying to use a blowtorch or some other sort of power tool to open it. She remembered that it didn’t work, and that she – Helena, that was – had an idea and manipulated some electrical cables to create a bubble of a sort in the large force field that was covering the entire building. She remembered Myka’s face, smiling at her, despite her tears. And she remembered dying.

 

She looked around, trying to find a phone, and lo and behold she found one plugged in at her bedside. Myka’s number was in there. She called it. She knew it was the middle of the night, but she didn’t know where she was, why she was here, or what was happening.

 

“Helena?” Myka’s voice was thick with tears.

 

“Myka? What’s wrong?” Emily asked.

 

“Artie. He killed Leena. He shot her, Helena. And he tried to kill us all, he tried to end the world. I…he tried to kill us. The astrolabe did something to him. He erased a day, Helena. I… I think you died, Helena. I don’t know what’s happening anymore, and I miss you and I don’t know where you are. I don’t understand,” she said, bursting into thick sobs.

 

“Myka, I don’t know where I am, but I’m sorry. I wish I could have been there for you. I don’t know where I am or why I’m here.”

 

“Fucking Regents,” Myka hissed. “Give me five minutes, Helena. I’ll call you back.”

 

And she did. She tersely confirmed that she would be there in an hour.

 

“You’re in Featherhead, Helena. I had Claudia trace your phone. They put you in Featherhead and they fucked up your memory again. When are they going to realise that you’re not a threat?” Myka ranted as she walked through the door. Emily stood there in her pyjamas, her arms wrapped around her own abdomen as she watched Myka rant about what the Regents were doing, about Helena sacrificing herself, about Leena – the B&B owner who had always been so kind to Helena. It was terribly confusing, so Emily made some tea, and when Myka had finished crying she took Emily to bed and made love to her ferociously. She left at 5am, promising to come back the next night, to make things right with the Regents, to get Helena home. Emily didn’t find out for a while whether Myka did or not because Emily didn’t awaken again until a few months later. She was in bed next to a large man. _Nate._ Her brain helpfully supplied the name. Emily turned on her phone, noted the date, and slipped out from under the man’s arm.

 

She went downstairs quietly, making tea in the large, unfamiliar kitchen. She could remember snippets, once again, of Helena’s time here, in Wisconsin, and of her time hiding the Astrolabe from Artie. But it was all a confusing blur and none of it explained what had made her decide to leave the Warehouse.

 

She called Myka.

 

“Myka, I don’t know where I am. I’m in Wisconsin, I know, but I don’t know where. There’s a man, here. And a child.”

 

She’d noticed the girl’s picture. She looked to be about Christina’s age. Emily thought that might explain why Helena had ended up here, at least partially. But why wasn’t she with Myka? These feelings that Emily had weren’t her own. She hadn’t fallen in love with Myka, Helena had - long before Emily had been born.

 

“I don’t understand, Helena. I spoke to the Regents and they said they hadn’t done anything to you. I went back to Featherhead, and you weren’t there anymore. I tried to get Claudia to find you, but she said you had covered your tracks. Why are you in Wisconsin?”

 

“I don’t know,” Emily said, anguish colouring her tone. She had no idea why Helena would come here. How could she possibly choose this man over Myka? If she was truly free, why would she make that decision?

 

“I don’t understand what’s happening here, Helena. I thought… I thought we had something, and you just… you keep leaving. I never know where you are. I can’t keep doing this. It hurts too much. Just… just come home, if you want me. You know where I am. Come home.”

 

And Myka hung up, leaving Emily alone and lost in a world she didn’t understand. She lay on the sofa and wept until she fell asleep.

 

When she woke up the next time, she was in Nate’s bed again. It was six months after the last awakening, and if anything, she was more confused than she had been the last time. She remembered a horrible, horrible dream about Myka coming here and Helena telling her that she finally felt like she belonged in this place.

 

_“Make this your home…” Myka had said, her eyes filled with tears._

Emily sat up, carefully dislodging Nate’s arm at her waist, and she went to the girl’s room. She was awake.

 

“Emily? I mean, Helena? What’s wrong?” the girl asked. _Adelaide._

 

“Adelaide, did my friend Myka come here?” she asked. The girl nodded solemnly.

 

Adelaide told her about the men that abducted her, about Myka saving her, about them saying goodbye in the driveway. It was true. Helena had talked to Myka and had still chosen to stay here. What was wrong with her?

 

_You, Emily. You’re what’s wrong with her._

 

Her mind made the connection. _She_ was what was wrong. She was still in existence, and she should have died when they put the Janus coin in her hand. She should never have woken up after that day. Emily Lake should have died, but she was still here.

 

“Adelaide, I have to go. To see Myka. Would you tell your dad I’ll call him to explain, darling?”

 

The girl’s dark eyes held hers for a long moment, and then she nodded.

 

“I’ll miss you, Helena. I hope you’ll be happy,” she said, and Emily smiled at her.

 

“Goodbye, darling,” she said.

* * *

 

She found a 24-hour drugstore and loaded up on caffeine tablets and energy drinks. By the time she reached South Dakota and the B&B she had caffeine tremors and she was freezing, but she didn’t trust herself to put the heater on in case she fell asleep. She pulled into the driveway behind Myka’s car, sighing in relief that Myka was there and not on a retrieval, and she let herself in quietly. She crept upstairs quietly – it was 4 in the morning, and she didn’t want to wake everyone – or at least not just yet – and she let herself into Myka’s room. She was about to walk to the bed when she felt the gun touch her lower back, making her jump.

 

“Myka?” she asked, swallowing loudly.

 

“Helena?”

 

The gun disappeared, and Myka switched the light on.

 

“You scared the crap out of me,” she said, her brows pulled down in a frown. “What the hell are you doing here? Do you know what time it is? I could have killed you!”

 

“I know,” Emily said. “I just – I had to see you, to try to fix things. I think I messed everything up, Myka.”

 

Myka’s expression darkened.

 

“What do you want, Helena?” she asked, locking her gun in the safe carefully. 

 

“I’m not Helena,” Emily said, sitting down with a sigh. “I’m Emily Lake, or what’s left of her.”

 

Myka stared at her.

 

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

 

“I mean just that. I remember being Emily Lake, and I remember dying when Walter Sykes gave me the Janus coin. I woke up in bed here at the B&B after Artie saved the Warehouse from the bomb. You came in, and we talked, and we made love for the first time.”

 

“How…?” Myka began, but she trailed off.

 

“I woke again, and it was a while later, and you came to see me in Featherhead. Leena was dead. Do you remember?”

 

Myka nodded, sitting down opposite her, watching her carefully.

 

“And then when I woke the next time, I was in Wisconsin. I called you, and you told me you were tired of being hurt when I kept disappearing.”

 

Myka nodded again.

 

“I woke tonight and I remembered a dream, a dream of telling you that I was staying there in Wisconsin. I got up and I spoke to the girl, Adelaide, and she told me what happened. I think it’s my fault, Myka. I think I… I think that some of Helena’s memories and emotions are stuck with me. I think that she is making decisions and doing what she feels is right, but it’s because I have those feelings that would mean that she made different decisions. Specifically, because I have her love for you, Myka. Because I still exist and I selfishly let myself steal you. I think when Sykes used the Janus coin, something of me stayed behind.”

 

Myka looked at her carefully.

 

“So why are you here, Helena? Emily, sorry. What do you want from me?”

 

“She’s making a mistake, Myka. We are mostly separate, but I can feel that she doesn’t feel this, what I do,” she said, jabbing her sternum with her fingers. “She doesn’t feel this, and she can’t make the right decisions because of it. It’s my fault, not hers. I stole you because I was selfish. We have to make this right.”

 

Myka walked out of the room, leaving Emily sitting there uncertainly. A few minutes later, Myka returned with an extremely sleepy-looking Steve.

 

“Tell him what you told me,” she demanded sharply. Emily nodded, and told Steve her story. He nodded at Myka when she was finished.

 

“She’s telling the truth,” he said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

 

“My god,” Myka breathed, staring. “I thought maybe Helena had been whammied after Boone. Everything she said, everything she did, it was so out of character. But I never thought it was anything like this.”

 

“I’m sorry, Myka,” Emily said, her eyes on the floor. She was so ashamed that her desire for even a little bit of life had resulted in this pain for the woman she loved.

 

“How do we fix this?” Myka asked, spreading her hands in confusion. “How?”

 

“I don’t know, but we need to do something soon. I can’t stay awake too much longer, Myka, and when I fall asleep she’ll be back, and she won’t know any of this. She’ll go back to Boone. Wake Artie and Claudia and Mrs Frederic. They’ll know what to do.”

 

The next hour or so was a bustling hive of activity. Myka and Steve drove Emily to the Warehouse, with Pete and Claudia following them. Mrs Frederic and Artie were deep in conversation when they arrived.

 

“Hello, Emily,” Mrs Frederic said cordially.

 

“Mrs Frederic,” she said politely, inclining her head.

 

“Thank you for coming forward,” she said. “This matter has been causing a certain amount of concern in some quarters, and pain in others,” she said, with a hint of an eyebrow in Myka’s direction. “You are very brave, to tell us.”

 

“It was unfair of me to stay silent this long,” Emily admitted. Myka shot her a look full of pain.

 

“Perhaps. But we all want to live, and to love,” Mrs Frederic said, and she smiled slightly. Emily felt a little better.

 

They decided to try the Janus coin again, this time stripping away anything that remained of Emily Lake, followed by neutralising the coin itself.

 

“That should remove the rogue personality traits and return Helena’s memories and feelings to her in their entirety,” Claudia said, watching Emily through narrowed eyes. Rogue personality traits? That’s all she was, in the end?

 

She took a deep breath as she sat in the chair. Mrs Frederic handed her the coin, her own hands in purple gloves. She began to talk Emily through her memories, and Emily felt them disappear slowly. She felt herself disappear.

 

“I love you,” she said, looking directly at Myka as her world dissolved before her eyes. Dickens, Myka, her pupils, the brief time she’d spent on this earth - all of it disappeared. Emily Lake died for the second time, and no-one mourned her, not even the woman she loved. 

 

 

Helena Wells awoke in a chair in the Warehouse’s main office with Mrs Frederic opposite her, a crackling static bag in her hand.

 

“What on earth…” she began, before a veritable barrage of memories hit her all at once. She almost blacked out. It took her a few moments to catch her breath, but she was able to make a sensible narrative out of what appeared to be at least two discrete sets of memories. Her eyes immediately sought out Myka, the woman she loved with all of her pathetic, broken heart, and Myka smiled hesitantly when she saw the look in Helena’s eyes.

 

“Agent Wells, can you…” Mrs Frederic began, but Helena was already up and moving, throwing her arms around Myka and kissing her.

 

“I love you, Myka,” she said, tears almost blinding her, and Myka’s answering smile was blinding in its intensity. They clung to one another, their eyes locked on each other, in their own silent world.

 

“Was she right? Was she – did she keep your feelings for me?” Myka asked in a whisper.

 

“Yes, darling,” Helena said. “I remember everything, love.”

 

“Everything?” Myka asked, breathlessly.

 

“Everything,” Helena promised.

 

“Ladies? Could somebody please explain what’s going on?” Artie barked.

 

Helena turned to face the rest of the room.

  
“Thank you, everyone, for helping with this. I think that, somehow, the Janus coin didn’t do quite what it was supposed to when Sykes used it to return me to my body,” she said, her face darkening as she remembered her time in the prison of the Janus coin.

 

“How so, Agent Wells?” Mrs Frederic asked, her diction precise as ever.

 

“I was returned to my body, but Emily Lake’s personality was not destroyed as it should have been. She remained, and somehow she was able to take control of me at various times when I was asleep. She… stole, for want of a better phrase, part of my personality, my emotions. Specifically, my feelings concerning Myka, which I think you’ve probably all noticed are romantic in nature, and my attachment to the Warehouse and all of you. Which is why I ended up in Boone bloody Wisconsin playing house with what’s-his-name.”

 

“Nate,” Pete supplied helpfully. Helena and Myka both glared at him.

 

“Yes, Nate, and his wonderful daughter. Because I was devoid of feeling for Myka and for the Warehouse, I made the logical decision, which was to stay away from the danger of it all. That was why I made the decision to leave the Warehouse even though the Regents offered to let me stay on as an agent, and that was why I went to seek a quiet, safe life. Logic, bereft of feeling. Emily, in the meantime, was waking sporadically and wondering what on earth was going on – she called Myka each time she woke, and the first time Myka went to her, not knowing that it was Emily and not me. The second time, Myka told her to come home. She woke last night and drove straight here, realising that she was the reason I had made the decisions I had. By using the coin to remove her memories, the barrier between me and my feelings has been overcome. I also have her memories in full, for some reason. Probably some sort of glitch with the artefact, but there’s nothing to be done about that now, since it’s already been neutralised.”

 

She bowed her head wearily; her body had been up and on the move for over 12 hours already when it should have been sleeping, and she had driven a huge distance to get to the Warehouse.

 

“Hey, Helena. We should get you back to the B&B. Is that okay with you, Artie? Mrs Frederic?” Myka asked anxiously. Artie and Mrs Frederic shared a quick look and then nodded.

 

“Thank you, everyone, for your assistance,” Helena said again tiredly, and everyone smiled and nodded. They were all clearly happy to have her back, but ready to return to their interrupted sleep. Myka tugged on Helena’s arm and they went to the car. Pete drove them home and they sat in the backseat hand in hand, Helena’s head on Myka’s shoulder.

 

When they arrived at the B&B, Myka pulled Helena along in her wake and led her to Myka’s room.

 

“Is this okay?” she asked, and Helena nodded numbly. She changed into the pyjamas Myka handed her, not bothering to hide her body. She was too tired, and Myka had already seen it all. While Emily was in control, but it was still her body. Myka did the same, and pulled her to the bed, wrapping her arms tightly around Helena.

 

“I missed you so much,” she murmured, and Helena could only kiss her in response.

 

“Myka, I want you, my love, so much. But Emily has worn my body out with this crazy jaunt, I’m so sorry,” she said, yawning at least three times in that short space of time.

 

“It’s okay, Helena,” Myka said, her eyes soft in the low light, “now that I know you’re here, I can wait. Holding you here like this, it’s more than I would have even imagined a few months ago, after Boone.”

 

“I love you,” Helena said, sincerely but sleepily. Myka smiled at her fondly.

 

“Get some sleep, old lady,” she said, her lip curling in amusement. “You’re gonna need your energy tomorrow. I love you, Helena.” The last part was whispered, and she leaned in a little to kiss Helena softly. Helena fell asleep in Myka’s arms, and Emily Lake lived again, in her dreams.

 

THE END


End file.
